Space timeline: 1980s

1980: 12 November: Saturn's rings are caught on film by the Voyager 1 space probe The photographs showed bands of yellow and orange clouds circling the planet at several hundred miles an hour. 1981: 12 April: Maiden voyage of first space shuttle Columbia 1983: 24 June: the United States' first woman astronaut Sally Ride returns in the Challenger space shuttle after a six day flight 1986: 28 January: Seven dead in space shuttle disaster as Challenger explodes live on TV, just a minute after take-off 20 February: Soviets open a new phase in space exploration with the launch of the world's biggest space station, Mir 1988: 29 September: Space Shuttle Discovery blasts the US back into space after two and half years 1989: 25 August: Voyager 2 spacecraft reaches Neptune Next: The 1990s Space homepage